St. Dominic Catholic Church

Homilies

July 29, 2018 - 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The fourth sign Jesus performs in the Gospel of John begins under a shadow.

St. John says, “A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick.” 

The story ends under a shadow.

Jesus withdraws from the crowd that has just witnessed this great sign of multiplied loaves and fish, reminiscent of the manna God sent in the wilderness.

He withdraws because they want to make him king.

 

Clearly, Jesus does not want to be king.

At least he doesn’t want to be the king theywant him to be.

The crowd wants a king to lead them in battle with the Roman Empire, who occupied the land God promised to the Jews.

They wanted a prophet through whom God would channel His power for theirpurposes.

When he stands before Pilate later in this Gospel, Jesus will tell the Roman, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. (John 18:36)

But Jesus is not saying that his kingdom is only in the afterlife.

What he is saying is that his kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world based on domination, power, greed, because He is not like that.

Jesus came to restore our friendship with God that was lost in the Fall.

 

This miraclebeginsunder a cloud because the people were following Jesus physically, but they were not following him as disciples.

This miracle endsunder a cloud because the people want him to abandon the purpose His Father had given him – the reconciliation of the world to Himself.

We are tempted every day to do the same.

We are tempted to ignore the call to follow Jesus as a disciple.

Instead we ask Him to do ourwill.

How many of our prayers are petitions for what wewant?

We pray for good health, for financial stability, for change in people around us, for change in the world around us.

These are good things, but like the crowd in the Gospel, we’re missing the point.

We’re trying to use Jesus to make our lives more comfortable and less stressful.

We want to design a kingdom of thisworld.

Jesus came to overturnthe world and establish a kingdom unlike any before.

He did this through his death and resurrection from the dead, which was a new Passover from slavery to freedom, from death to life.

 

Without this perspective, we can misunderstand St. Paul when he urges us, “to live …with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love.”

St. Paul doesn’t just want us to be good people.

He wants us to experience new life, a Trinitarianlife of faith, sealed in baptism, in which the divisions caused by our sin are replaced with sharing in the unity of the Father, Son and Spirit. 

And this is not ourwork.

It is God’s work that begins in our conversion which enables us to see the new world that is coming into existence – a new world found in its fullness in Jesus Himself.

 

Jesus wants to feed our faith with a food that is as readily available as the multiplied barley loaves and fish. 

It is a food that is only available through Him, as a result of the Mass.

This food is the bread come down from heaven.

It is truly his own body and blood, without which we do not have life within us.

It is a food that brings about a greater intimacy with God than that which was lost in the Fall.

It is a food through which we receive not only his humanity, but also his divinity.

 

Jesus does not want groupies who follow him hoping to witness a miracle.

Do not treat him like a genie from a lantern who grants your wishes.

He desires intimacy with each one of us, who, through faith in Him, become disciples.

He desires that we be formed by His Church as apostles and to send us into the world to help people encounter Him through our transformed lives and the work we do in His kingdom.

This is what Jesus desired for the crowd, and what he desires for you.

This radical new life that begins with the death of our worldly point of view is, he promises, the fullness of life.

This is a life in which we step out of the shadows and say with Jesus, “My food and my drink is to do the will of the Father.”